Grace Malvena Allen’s “Good Parts of Bad Pictures”

We all have bad photos hidden in our libraries, but Columbia College Chicago alum Grace Malvena Allen has figured out a way to give her less-than-desirable outtakes new life. “Good Parts of Bad Pictures” is a series of cropped images that isolate that best parts of her old photos. “It began at a time when I wasn’t inspired to shoot, but still wanted to create,” she writes in a statement. “I began going back through my archives and looking at all of the bad pictures I had taken that were wasting away in folders and hard drives.”

Allen found interactions, expression, gestures and texture that, on their own, made stronger images than the originals. Check them out below.